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Savage Love

I am a 23-year-old male who has been in a relationship with a great woman for four years now. She is an amazing person, and we often talk about marriage. The issue is this: I have a foot fetish and she is fully aware of it. She doesn't like the idea of me kissing her feet or indulging my fetish in any way. We have sex quite often, and I've always let it slide that she doesn't want any part of my fetish. I don't know what to do, because I'm at a stage in my sexual growth where I need to experience my fetish. I'm getting mixed advice from different people and I just want a straight answer. The sex we have is amazing, but I would enjoy it so much more if I could act on my desires once in a while.

Sexually Frustrated Fetishist

Here's a straight answer: Your amazing girlfriend is an amazingly selfish lover, and I'm amazed that you've put up with her bullshit for as long as you have. A foot fetish is not uncommon or outrageous; as fetishes go, yours is the least taxing for a non-kinky partner. It's not like you're into shit or choking or Christian side-hugs. Any amazing woman who truly loved you would regard indulging you as a no-brainer.

I have a good friend who's not kinky at all -- unless you count being gay -- who goes for long runs every Saturday morning. When he gets home, he handcuffs his boyfriend to a chair, duct-tapes one of his sweaty sneakers over the boyfriend's face, and leaves him there while he has breakfast. My friend -- who came to me for advice when his boyfriend confessed his fetish -- isn't really into guys with sneakers duct-taped to their faces. But it gets his lover off, and isn't that what lovers are for?

Your lover has had things on her terms for four years, which means you're going to have to play the breakup card. It's the only leverage you have. Tell her that if she can indulge your fetish -- happily and regularly -- and take some pleasure in giving you pleasure, she might be "the one." If she can't or won't, she obviously isn't. (Not that "the one" is anything other than a destructive myth, but for the sake of winning this argument, go ahead and use it.)

Finally, don't let the girlfriend -- or anyone else -- tell you that you're threatening to end this relationship over something trivial. Sexual fulfillment is important, and the "triviality" of your kink cuts both ways: If your kink is so trivial, why not just indulge you? And in a long-term relationship -- or a marriage -- one partner's sexual selfishness and another's frustration rarely prove trivial. They're more often grounds for divorce.

I am a 35-year-old partnered gay man, but I've been having an online conversation with a married bisexual man that has become an ongoing game of sexual dares. It's a safe form of sexual adventurism. None of our dares has involved sexual contact with another person, but some of our dares have begun to involve other people at the edges. For example, we've posted ads to Craigslist as submissives and responded to some of the replies from dominant men. None of these interactions with third parties will result in actual contact. It feels a little like we are exploiting the "flakes" aspect of Craigslist, i.e., it's common to hear from someone a few times after making contact on Craigslist and then never hear from them again. But it also feels like we are using these folks. Is this expansion of our game ethical?

Concerned About Harming Craigslist Fellas

P.S. By the way, this letter is itself part of a dare. If you publish it and include a dare in the published reply, I will have to fulfill that dare.

The expansion of your game to Craigslist will annoy those guys on CL who are looking for actual contact, but as those guys amount to less than 0.02 percent of the men trawling Craigslist, I wouldn't worry about it. Everyone knows CL is overrun with flakes and game-players; the odds that the "dominant men" you've chatted with are interested in actual contact are pretty damn slim. (Guys interested in real-time BDSM play are likelier to be lurking on Recon.com or at your local hardware store.) So post at will.

I'm a straight guy. I have a girlfriend whom I live with and love very much. I just read your most recent column, in which you used the acronyms HND (honest nonmonogamous dude) and CPOS (cheating piece of shit), and it struck a nerve. I have never been an HND; I have been a CPOS (though not in this relationship). My girlfriend is lovely and generally GGG, and though the sex is good, I have a significantly higher libido than she does and I would like a little more variety in my sex life. I want to be an HND, but I don't know how to broach the subject. We are very open about our sex life and our relationship in general, but I think this is probably a "next level" topic. How do I bring this up without screwing up our relationship?

Aspiring Honest Nonmonogamous Dude

Based on what you've learned about yourself -- i.e., that you're a CPOS waiting to happen -- I would encourage you to err on the side of screwing up your current relationship with an honest conversation about your natural and normal desire for a little variety. Better to toss that out there now, even at the risk of winding down this relationship before you revert to form/CPOS, than to see the relationship explode after someone, most likely you, winds up cheating.

And while we're on the subject of cheating ...

I suppose I'm obligated to say a few words about Tiger Woods. First, let's pretend that Elin Nordegren cheated on Tiger and that Tiger went after Elin with a golf club. Would Elin be viewed as the sole transgressor in the marriage? Probably not. Second, daily papers and cable-news outfits reacted to Tiger's "transgressions" by changing the names in the same "Why do powerful men cheat?" stories they've been pimping since Bill Clinton blew a load on an intern. For the millionth time: Men cheat for the same reasons women cheat, i.e., because they're bored or horny or desperate to see someone else naked for a change. People cheat because monogamy isn't natural. That doesn't make cheating right; people should honor their commitments, and blah-de-nine-iron-blah. But we shouldn't encourage people to make commitments we all know they're unlikely to keep.

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